a midway bikelog

I can’t remember the last time oxygen came up three times in a day, but it did today, in very different contexts.

1. We’re getting ready to redesign our website at work, now that our current design is close to 3 years old, and the company is outgrowing the current design somewhat. We had a meeting this morning with a designer who brought a lot of samples of his work, and among them were sample size cans of Oxygen+ (peppermint), for which he had designed the brand and packaging. It’s supposed to give you an energy boost, but i didn’t try it out myself.

2. I attended a 1-day bicycle framebuilding workshop last saturday that was organized by a local bike shop with a local framebuilder of excellent reputation. It was a super fun time, hanging out in a metal shop all morning asking questions and seeing him braze a couple of joints and a dropout, looking at a frame in progress and the various tools and parts around. It inspired me to look at trying to build something simpler, like a luggage rack for one of my bikes, so i’ve been doing a little research into torches and steel tubing. The equipment is a little expensive to try out as a hobby, but the cheaper mapp/oxygen setups might work fine. So i found myself reading up a bit on torches, brazing, and oxygen cylinders in the afternoon.

3. I got an update on my dad tonight, and he now has oxygen with him all day. It’s a good news-bad news thing. He has been doing well in general lately, but had a setback last week when his cardiologist doubled one of his meds, apparently in error. He ended up with trouble breathing and fainted a couple of times and ended up in the ER. So, the oxygen is a bit of a hassle, but he feels much better and is sleeping better, which was a problem. And the not fainting – not fainting is good. Ending the day with news like this makes oxygen uses #1 and 2 seem all the more frivolous.